Artamus tregellasi Mathews

Artamus tregellasi Mathews, 1911a: 100 (Rockingham, West Australia).

Now Artamus cinereus cinereus Vieillot, 1817 . See Mathews, 1912a: 368; 1923b: 244–255; Mayr, 1962b: 164; Mees, 1982: 160–165; Schodde and Mason, 1999: 565–567; Dickinson, 2003: 464; Johnstone and Storr, 2004: 263–265; and Rowley and Russell, 2009b: 307.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 664994, sex?, collected at Rockingham, 32.16S, 115.21E (Times Atlas), Western Australia, Australia, undat- ed, collector not given. From the Mathews Collection (no. 2467) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype and gave the distribution as Rockingham without enumerating his specimens. The holotype was the only specimen from Rockingham that came to AMNH with the Rothschild Collection. It does not bear an original label and there is no information in Mathews’ catalog concerning the collector, In addition to a Mathews Collection label, a Mathews and a Rothschild type label, the holotype also bears a ‘‘Figured’’ label, indicating that it was the model for Mathews (1923b: pl. 477, lower figure, opp. p. 244; text p. 246) where the specimen is confirmed as the type of tregellasi .

Mathews considered that the type of A. cinereus Vieillot, 1817, came from Timor and that Gould’s acceptance of that name for specimens from Western Australia was not correct; therefore, the Western Australian birds were without a name, which he supplied by naming Artamus tregellasi . Mees (1982: 160–165) in a discussion of the type locality of cinereus showed that Vieillot’s type did come from Western Australia and designated a lectotype for the name. Some subsequent authors have accepted this lectotypification, e.g., Schodde and Mason (1999: 565–567), Dickinson (2003: 464), Dekker and Quaisser (2006: 57–58), and Rowley and Russell (2009b: 307); Johnstone and Storr (2004: 263–265) have not. Many other authors have expressed opinions and references to them are given by Mees (1982) and Schodde and Mason (1999).